


and we live again

by atlasky



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Edge of Tomorrow Fusion, Batfamily Feels, Characters to be added, Gen, rated for a lot of cursing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9949631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlasky/pseuds/atlasky
Summary: “What the hell,” Jason says, because his mind has played him countless tricks in his dreams but none as vivid. Because he knows damn well that it wasn’t a dream. He opens his eyes and looks up. Bruce’s mouth is drawn into a thin line.“Yes,” Bruce says.And so it begins.Live. Die. Repeat.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! :) hope you're going to enjoy this trainwreck with me. Skip to the end of the chapter for trigger warnings. Enjoy!

-

The hallway is pristine even though Jason can see shoe prints on the dark carpet that covers the entire floor. The ratty elevator door closes behind him and he twitches, fingertips itching for a cigarette. He starts to walk towards the third door down the hallway, ignoring the shouts he heard from the first and the dog barking behind the second. He regrets coming here already – doesn’t know why he even agreed in the first place. Except he woke up last Wednesday to a call from Alfred Pennyworth and none of their fucked up band of vigilantes can ever say no to Alfred Pennyworth.

So here he is, a week later, glaring at the door of Dick Grayson’s Gotham apartment. Technically it’s Tim’s, since he manages a shit ton of the Wayne enterprise, or maybe it’s still Bruce’s – Jason hasn’t checked the lease and he doesn’t care enough to. Dick’s been using the apartment whenever he stays in Gotham. Jason, who has been witness to a lot of things in the past, is well aware that it’s Dick’s code for: _Bruce is being an asshole and I can’t stand to be around him_. Tonight though, Jason knows that it’s because they don’t trust him enough with an invitation to the manor.

Jason wants to turn around and bail, but it’s too late now. He knows he’s already been seen by the security cameras. He’d rather sell his own soul than be seen retreating as if he’s intimidated by _them_ – or something like that. He shouldn’t have come in the first place. He has never said no to Alfred, but it might have been easier to do so if Kory and Roy hadn’t backed Alfred on this. They agree that the bats are messed up - yet Roy and Kory still think that Jason should accept a peace offering when he sees one. Jason knows it’s mainly because Alfred has been sending them food and care packages. Traitors, the both of them. (He also knows that it’s more complicated than that, but he’s never going to admit it to himself).

Jason raises his fist and knocks three times, each one louder than the last.

The door swings open and Dick, in a bright blue shirt that’s not the definition of low-key, takes one look at Jason and raises his eyebrow. “I hope you don’t bring guns,” Dick says. “I don’t need to search you, do I?”

Jason refrains from biting the inside of his cheek in annoyance. “Come on,” he says. “Rubber bullets only, I promise.” As if their batarangs aren’t sharp enough to slice open people’s throats. Jason should know.

Dick stares at him for a little longer, but in the end he steps aside and opens the door wider without another word. Jason walks past him and into the apartment. There are loud voices coming from the living room, so instead Jason turns right to the wide and open space of the kitchen. Dick follows him. When Jason looks over his shoulder at him, Dick just gives him a challenging grin. Jason rolls his eyes. Fine. Whatever.

In the kitchen, Alfred is chopping some carrots on the counter. He gives Jason a nod. Jason doesn’t want to think of how after all these years Alfred’s approval still lights up his insides, so he turns his gaze to Damian, who’s sitting on a stool and scowling at the ceiling like it personally offended him.

“Demon brat,” Jason says. He doesn’t reach out to tousle the kid’s hair because Jason’s not _that_ suicidal. “Never thought you’d say yes to a birthday party.”

“Todd,” Damian replies, because after a disastrous mission last month involving Killer Croc during which the both of them nearly got mauled - they’ve been in a neutral impasse. It’s only about time until they resort back to violence and blowing each other up, but for now it’s ceasefire between them. “I did not. But Brown and Grayson were being obnoxious about it.”

Dick makes an offended noise in the back of his throat and ruffles the kid’s hair because he is _that_ suicidal. Damian glares at Dick and ducks out of the way, but if it’s a beat too late, none of them points it out. Dick’s blue eyes glint with mirth. “Little D, you don’t turn thirteen every day.”

Jason slips away when he spots a particular twitch of Damian’s eyebrow, uninterested. The twitch means the kid is about to start one of his rants about how pointless everything is, and Jason doesn’t have the same patience that Dick has to listen to the brat. He eyes the black and white framed prints on the wall as he walks to the ruckus in the living room. They weren’t there the last time he was here. But then again, he hasn’t been here since before he died. He turns around the corner to where the ruckus is and he’s greeted by the sight of Stephanie pushing the replacement off the couch. Tim catches himself from hitting the floor easily with an arm, stands up, and smirks at her. “Ha. Take that, Brown.”

There’s a plus four sitting on top of the pile of Uno cards on the coffee table.

Duke, who is sitting on the other couch waves at Jason. Jason hasn’t had a lot of interactions with the kid but he respects him. Jason respects anyone who doesn’t meddle with other people’s business. Much. Cassandra, the only one of them Jason doesn’t mind to call his sibling, beams at Jason from where she sits on the floor. It makes Jason feel awkward, seeing the open welcome on her face, so he doesn’t respond, just strides further to the lone armchair at the corner of the room. But whatever Cassandra sees on him make her smile. Jason doesn’t think he’d ever understand her in some ways.

“Hood,” says Steph, picking up four cards from the Uno card deck. Jason’s halfway across the room. Duke throws a card on the messy pile because it’s his turn. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Oh, he’d come,” Tim replies, glancing at Jason with a knowing look. “He wouldn’t miss the opportunity to ruin a family outing.” There’s something else that Tim is saying, an undertone, but Jason doesn’t want to listen to it. Here’s the thing about Tim Drake that Jason wishes isn’t true: Tim Drake understands. It would be easier to hate him if he doesn’t, but Tim does, and maybe Jason doesn’t hate him for anything else but he does hate Tim for understanding.

Jason flips them off and drops himself into the armchair, legs spread wide.

Stephanie snickers and Tim rolls his eyes. “Real mature.”

“When’s Bruce getting here?” Duke asks. “I kind of have a thing later.”

“He’s… on his way,” Cassandra says, her eyes darting to Jason.

Jason opens his palm and closes it again around empty air. Fuck. He needs a smoke.

“You have a thing alright,” Stephanie says, throwing a card onto the table. “And your thing is a plus two. Suck it, Thomas.”

Duke throws a card on top of Steph’s that Jason can’t see. “Nope, I got this.”

“That doesn’t work!” Steph protests loudly. “You can’t reverse a plus!”

“Who said that I can’t?” Duke protests back. “I’ve always played Uno that way.”

Stephanie turns to Tim. “Tell him he can’t do that.”

Tim says, wincing, “Sorry man, you can’t use the reverse card like that.”

Cassandra leans back against Duke’s legs. “I don’t see… why not.”

“Hell yeah,” Duke pumps his fist in the air. “Cass knows what I’m talking about.”

Jason watches.

See, it’s funny. A few months ago, if someone as much as suggest the idea that he would be sitting here in this room, Jason would call them a lunatic. Perhaps he still would, now, and yet here he is. It’s a weird feeling, having one foot in the door and the other one on the outside.

If it’s up to him, he would be out of there in a heartbeat.

Jason reaches into his pocket for his cigarette carton and lighter. He opens the window next to him slightly, leans against his seat, shakes the pack until a cigarette slips out, and puts it between his lips. The argument stops. _Woops._

Cassandra clears her throat and Jason groans. Jason looks up. Duke, for his part, just shrugs an apology. Like Jason said. He kinda likes the kid. “What,” Jason deadpans, cigarette still in between his lips, lighter between his fingers. “It’s not like I haven’t died before anyway.”

Stephanie points at herself. She wriggles her index finger. “Uh, hello?”

“Yeah,” Tim says. “She might not appreciate you killing her again with lung cancer.”

A retort is at the tip of Jason’s tongue when someone knocks on the front door.

He doesn’t tense up at the sound, but he wants to. Instead, he opts to light his cigarette and ignite a groan from the others. He takes a long drag and feels the pleasant burn in his lungs. He hears the front door opening and Dick’s voice greeting Bruce. Logically, he knew it would be Bruce. He hoped it’s not him either way.

Jason takes another drag of his cigarette and counts to three. There’s no sound of his footsteps, but Bruce enters the living room, takes one look at Jason, and does that thing with his face where he erases his expression to hide that he’s pissed off. It’s a clench of his jaw and a twitch of his lips. “Balcony,” Bruce says, voice stern. “No smoking indoors.”

“No smoking indoors,” Jason mocks, but he stands up because he can’t stand to be in the same room with Bruce. He can feel the others watching the both of them. His skin crawls with the simmering anger that appears whenever Bruce is near. It hasn’t even been five minutes but Jason wants to throw a shoe at Bruce’s face already. Not to mention, seeing Bruce in his Bruce Wayne getup _always_ makes Jason’s anger worse somehow. “Fucking killjoy.”

Jason walks briskly to the balcony door, opens it, and slams it shut behind him. Up there, on the tenth floor, the wind is strong enough to slightly rattle the lone wooden chair pushed up against the wall. Jason debates on sitting down but decides that he’s too wired, so he leans on the railing and watches the city below instead. The glass balcony door mutes any sound that comes out from the inside, but Jason can make out moving shapes from the corner of his eyes.

This has been a bad idea, he thinks. He should go, and he would have, if only some part of him is not left behind in a warm kitchen with shining tiles and a grandfather’s smiling mouth from years ago. It’s more of a curse than a blessing, now, but somehow it’s the only thing that he can’t seem to detach himself from.

He stands there for ten, fifteen minutes, watching the sky slowly darkens into dusk, before the glass door slides open again.

“Hey uh, we’re starting the party. Alfred insisted that you come back inside,” Duke tells him. Jason wonders what bet Duke lost, that he’s the one sent to talk with the walking time bomb. Jason glances back at Duke and observes the way that his shoulders are slouched and the way his hands are hidden in the pockets of his hoodie – effortlessly casual. Yeah, Jason remembers the illusion of belonging. That wouldn’t last long.

“Do yourself a favor kid,” Jason says. He stubs the butt of his cigarette on the railing and leaves it there, waiting to be blown by the wind. “Run away while you still can.”

Duke frowns. His back straightens. Jason thinks he sees a glint of determination. Cute. “Maybe you’re the one who should try to stick around.”

“Yeah?” Jason says. His shoulder brushes with Duke’s when he walks past him into the wide expanse of the living room. “I did, and it fucking sent me six feet underground.”

-

Damian’s birthday cake is a huge rounded cake with chocolate frosting. There are thirteen candles neatly aligned around the written _Happy Birthday Damian_ and the brat has never looked more _tortured_. Damian’s eyes keep flicking between the front door and the ceiling above him, as if he’s counting the probability of him escaping or the building crumbling down on top of them. Jason represses a snicker and curls his fingers around his soda bottle, the one Alfred put between his fingers with a pointed look earlier, just when Jason was aching for a beer.

The whole group is singing happy birthday in the most exaggerated way possible, circled around the dining table, except for Jason who chooses to lean on a kitchen stool a few steps back. He pretends he doesn’t notice the way Bruce has avoided turning his back on him ever since Jason walked back into the room, even though it’s slowly making Jason’s blood boil.

The replacement has turned his chair backwards and is straddling it; one hand operating a video camera that Jason knows belongs to Dick. Cassandra is singing along to Dick’s and Stephanie’s off key pitches, her own words quiet but present in the air. Duke is clapping his hands, obviously avoiding standing anywhere near Jason from the way he’s gravitating towards Bruce. Maybe Jason should feel terrible – the kid has done nothing wrong to him after all, but Jason just can’t muster enough energy to be sorry. Not when he told Duke the truth.

The song ends – Damian leans down, and reluctantly blows the candles. The residual smoke does nothing to hide the slight flush of his cheeks. Dick reaches out to give the kid a one-armed hug that the brat struggles against. Jason doesn’t remember much from his birthdays back before he died. He knows that there were just him, Bruce, and Alfred. Dick was mostly absent, what with his teams and off-world missions, and the disagreements that he used to have all the time with Bruce. But Jason’s memories about them were foggy at best, much like some of his pit-stained ones still are. Jason takes another gulp of his soda.

“We should take a group picture!” Stephanie exclaims, as she leans down to cut a piece of the cake. Jason wonders if there were cakes for his birthday back then, and then curses himself for thinking about it, because nothing is worse than reminiscing about his irrelevant past. Tim attaches his camera on a tripod. The others start to scramble for position, pushing at one another and bickering when someone steps on their foot. Bruce puts a hand on Damian’s shoulder and shakes his head at something Steph and Duke say, mouth curling into something small.

Jason presses his back against the wall and curls his fingers tighter on the soda bottle.

“Come here Jay,” Dick says, waving his hands at him, amongst the chaos.

Jason snorts. “You’re kidding yourself, Goldie.”

“Master Jason,” Alfred says, and Jason swallows.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

He puts the soda bottle down and inches closer towards the crowd. He feels Bruce’s gaze on him and Jason resolutely avoids looking his way. Cass slings an arm over his shoulder and when Jason glances at her, she shoots him a grin. Jason feels something in him loosens and he rolls his eyes.

“Look into the camera and smile – or do whatever it is you do with your face, Damian—“

“Screw you, Drake.”

“One,” Tim starts to count, smirking. “Two…”

The camera flash goes off.

-

He gets drunk in a dive bar two blocks away from his current safe house. The bartender cuts him off when she thinks he’s had one too many to drink; in reality he feels like he can still drink more. A lot more. He just wants to – he doesn’t know what, exactly, but it has something to do with the way his heart has been squeezing in his chest ever since he excused himself from Dick’s apartment.

He kicks off his shoes before he dives on his bed and dials Roy’s number. The other guy doesn’t pick up, but when Jason checks his inbox he finds three voice mails from Roy. Jason falls asleep listening to Roy recounting about his mission with Kori, and in rare moment of self-indulgence, Jason wishes he could be there, instead of here, in a room with no window and in a city he can never escape.

And then he wakes up to the sound of an explosion.

Which, of course, is just his luck.

He curses out loud as reflex sends him careening out of his bed and flat on the floor. The far wall of the room has been blown and now there’s a hole and a blue creature with one eye and slimy skin staring at him. “Son of a b--,” Jason curses again, and he scrambles for the gun he hides under the pillow before pulling the trigger.

The creature screeches, startled, but it doesn’t seem to be impacted otherwise.

Shit, shit, shit.

Jason starts to run and the creature launches at him. He skids at the corner of his living room and makes his way to his supply closet, creature hot at his heel. He has one chance at this. He throws the door open and reaches for a grenade, then he throws it at the creature and sends himself flat on the floor, for the second time that day. It’s starting to be a theme.

The creature screams. That’s the only way to describe the sound. Jason stays down, gripping a gun, and waits until the scorching heat dissipates. He dares himself to look up then, because he’s fucked if the creature is still out to get him, and exhales a relieved breath when he finds what’s left of it is a pile of dust on the ground. So either fire or the explosion that did it - that’s a useful information. Jason leaps to his feet, quietly mourning his now ruined safe house, and grabs a duffle bag to fill it with explosives and guns. He walks back to his room to grab his phone and the oracle communicator. Babs may not agree with his method, but she doesn’t keep him out of loop. The sounds of screams and people crying can be heard from the hole on his wall. He stands still for a second, squinting his eyes at the burning house in front of him. He knows for a fact that it’s abandoned - Tom’s mother passed away a month ago and he was sent to a relative in Star City - and feels a bit relieved. His own place is at the basement of another abandoned house that he purchased with some cash he had stolen from some dead drug dealers, and frankly, it’s one of the few that he knows Bruce hasn’t tracked yet. Finding another one is going to be a pain in the ass.

Jason flips his communicator open to find the line dead.

He unlocks his phone to find no signal.

Jason growls, shoving them haphazardly into his duffle bag along with his weapons, and grabs his motorcycle keys. He hates to do this, but he needs to find one of the Bats right away, just to know what the fuck is going on. As he races through the dark Gotham streets, taking a back shortcut so he doesn’t run over the crowd of panicking people, he nearly crashes into a speeding car at an intersection near the replacement’s place. Jason brakes at the right second and is ready to give the goddamn driver a piece of his mind, nevermind that the world is probably ending, and freezes when he sees the familiar car. The Mercedes in a back Gotham alleway.

Bruce is climbing out of the driver’s seat, in blue polo shirt and black jeans.

Jason stares and Bruce stares back. He sees Bruce’s eyes, sweeping Jason from head to toe. Checking for injuries, a part of Jason unhelpfully supplies, but he forces the voice down. Jason knows what the Mercedes and Bruce’s clothes mean. Brucie’s clothes. “What the fuck,” Jason says. “Figures that the world is ending and you were on a fucking date with some socialite.”

“Get in the car,” Bruce tells him gruffly, and some part of Jason wants to tell him off.

“I can’t leave my bike,” Jason scoffs instead. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’re wasting time,” Bruce snaps, and he’s already getting back inside his car, expecting Jason to follow, just like that. The car machine hums as Bruce restarts it, and Jason, hating the entire situation, finds himself sitting on the passenger seat with the duffle back of weapons on his lap.

“You seriously don’t have anything with you? Fuck, you’re useless,” Jason says. Just because he’s stuck doesn’t mean he has to make it easy or play nice. Once in awhile, Bruce does normal things out of obligations, such as picking his dates up in a car without an emergency batsuit and with minimum protection, in case some paparazzi gets crazy and tries to sneak on him. A valid concern, since it may have happened once or twice before. One of them busted Bruce’s old BMW trunk open and climbed in when it was on valet parking.

Bruce glances over at him as the car returns to the main road. For the first time that night, Jason sees the full extent of the chaos. People are running into the buildings that are not on fire, desperate for protection, visibly locking doors and blocking windows. “Check under the back seat,” Bruce grunts.

Jason leans backward and finds the tiny hidden compartment. He pulls a small box out and deposits it on his lap, dumping his bag of weapons on the car floor. So far Bruce hasn’t said anything about the obvious outlines of the guns in the bag, but Jason knows he has noticed. Jason opens the box to find several batarangs, a few small explosives, and a stun gun. Nothing that couldn’t be explained as things Bruce Wayne had gotten from the Batman as protection. The Wayne corporation has been vocal in supporting the vigilantes, after all. Jason clicks his tongue in annoyance. The small explosives might work to distract or temporarily incapacitate the creatures, but frankly they have no use of any of those. “I blew one up,” Jason says. “Everything you have here, right now? Won’t work on those creatures at all.”

“Were you hurt?” Bruce asks, seriously.

“You did your checkup earlier,” Jason says. Then he quickly changes the subject. “Anyway I haven't been able to contact anyone.”

“Communication is down,” Bruce says, as the car turns onto the road that leads to the replacement’s condo. “Even with the Justice League. I called for Superman but received no response. There's a spare suit and several heavier weapons at Tim's place. Earlier today he said he has no other plans for the night.” Isn't that a feat? Bruce voluntarily calling Clark to Gotham? What's worse is that Superman didn't show up. Clark _always_ shows up for Bruce. This may be more serious than he thinks.

“What are these creatures? Aliens? Monsters? Mutations? Don't you have an Alien invasion plan? I know I've seen it on the Batcomputer somewhere.”

Bruce ignores his jab. “There’s an evacuation going on by the police, but without working communication, they’re not fast enough. We need to help them.”

Jason turns on his seat. “How do _you_ know there’s an evacuation going on? Who were you on a date with tonight?”

Bruce lets out a small breath, which is his equivalent of a sigh, and Jason _refuses_ to feel like a scolded twelve-years-old kid in a scaly pants. “I doubt there are more important things to talk about than who my date was,” Bruce says drily. “How’s your weapon situation?”

“She?” Bruce quirks an eyebrow. He never knows with Bruce. “He, then. He has to be high enough on the Gotham ladder to be privileged on that sort of information even without working communication line,” Jason groans. “And we all had a bet on you chasing the Mayor’s daughter.”

“Hn. All of you?”

“Well. Damian didn’t. Selina promised him another cat, after all.”

“I thought you’re not getting along with the others.”

Just like that, Jason’s reminded of who he’s talking to. Jason scowls and narrows his eyes. What’s _his_ fucking deal? “Them, I don’t have a problem with. _You_ , on the other hand - “

Bruce’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Jason - ,” Bruce starts.

He never get to hear the rest because a creature five times the size he met jumps in the middle of the road. Bruce swerves the car and - only because he's Batman - manages not to hit a lamp post. They quickly unbuckle their seatbelts and exit the car and Jason reaches for his weapons. “Fuck that thing is bigger than the others,” Jason snarls, reaching into the bag to grab his explosives and a handgun. The creature is also a different color, red with long tentacles that have pointed sharp ends. And it’s big eye is looking at them.

“B,” Jason says, tossing Bruce a couple of grenades that he catches easily. Bruce pulls the safety pin and long throws one of it at the creature. In the seconds that it takes for the grenade to blow up, they start to run. Jason looks over his shoulder; the grenade barely even fazes the thing.

“A plan would be great,” Jason yells at Bruce, his voice barely audible underneath all the monster’s approaching growls.

“We need to look for its weak spot,” Bruce says. The one thing that Bruce believes, even now, is that everything  and everyone has a weak spot. Except for Wonder Woman. Jason doesn’t think Wonder Woman has a weakness. They duck inside one of the high rise buildings and dash for the back exit, the creature still following them, but then Bruce stops on his track.

Jason has his hand on the door handle. “What the hell are you doing?”

Bruce holds a palm up. “Do you hear that?”

And Jason hears it: there’s someone crying nearby. A little kid.

His eyes widen. Bruce extends his hand towards Jason. “Go. Get them out. I’ll distract the creature.” Jason wants to curse Bruce’s entire existence and yell at him over how stupid the idea is, but instead he gives Bruce the explosives and turns to the corridor on his right.

He makes it to the farthest door and slams it open. It’s an empty office. There’s a young kid, his fist in front of his mouth as if he’s trying to muffle his sobs, and his father, arms around the kid and looking up at Jason with surprised eyes. “We need to get out of here,” Jason tells them, then he gets his handgun out and grips it. Even though it’s useless, Jason needs to get them out of here and they’d only do that if they’re confident of him. The dad picks the kid up and pulls him close to his chest. Jason looks away and starts walking towards the emergency exit, making sure they’re following him. He can hear the sound of a ruckus in the main lobby and can only half imagine the hell Batman is raising out there. Jason kicks the door open and the guy shoots him a grateful look before scurrying out of the building. “Avoid the main roads,” Jason calls after them.

Then he rushes back to where Bruce is.

The creature is - battered now. Jason doesn’t know how but Bruce put up one hell of a fight. He didn’t even think the grenades would be that effective. The four tentacles are down to two, and the creature is oozing blue liquid all over.

Jason spots Bruce on the floor and the pool of blood around him and everything narrows down.

If someone asks him about it, he’ll tell them that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And it’s true, he doesn’t even realize it, not until he’s facing the creature, standing in front of Bruce’s bleeding form, gun raised in his hand. Bruce’s screaming at him, but Jason barely hears anything. The creature raises one of its sharp tentacle and Jason pulls the trigger of his gun.

The last thing he feels is the tentacle impaling his chest. But the creature screeches too, as the bullet hits its eye, and just before Jason’s eyes slip shut, he sees the creature explode right in front of him.There’s a blinding blue light and he feels himself splattered by something slimy. Gross. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes again. His eyelids are heavy and he’s so tired.

At least he goes down fighting.

Not bad for his second death.

He doesn’t even feel it when he hits the floor.

-

The first thing that he sees when he wakes up is Bruce’s face. He’s standing next to Jason’s bed like the weird creep he is. Jason groans and slips his eyes back shut. “Fuck off,” he mumbles, burrowing his face into his pillow. “I don't need this right now or ever.”

Except. Wait. This is wrong.

“Jason,” Bruce says.

There's something missing.

Jason screws his eyes shut tighter and tries to make sense of everything. For one, his body feels like he was bludgeoned to death. Again. The memory of what happened before - before he lost consciousness and woke up with Bruce's face in front of him, slams into his mind.

Jason’s hand shoots up to palm his chest, expects to find a gaping hole on his chest but doesn’t. Expects to be dead again but isn’t.

  
“What the fuck,” Jason says, because his mind has played him countless tricks in his dreams but none as vivid. Because he knows damn well that it wasn’t a dream. He opens his eyes and looks up. Bruce’s mouth is drawn into a thin line.

  
“Yes,” Bruce says.

  
And so it begins.

  
Live. Die. Repeat.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: for those of you who haven't seen the movie... Jason is going to die in this fic. A lot of times. This fic will focus more on how Jason plus the entire Batfam deal with that, so. Bear with me, I hope I can do them justice. :)


	2. Chapter 2

-

Jason leaps off his bed. “What the fuck,” he says, because he’s in the bedroom of his safehouse and there’s no hole on the wall. There’s no hole on the wall. Was it all a sick dream? Jason knows somehow, deep in his bones, that it’s _not_ . It was real, but there’s no sane explanation on how he’s here, not dead, and how his bedroom is still whole - his phone is on the pillow from where it must have fallen when he fell asleep and his pile of books is stacked on the corner of the room - and not destroyed. There’s no explanation on how Bruce is here, either, when this is a safe house that Bruce is supposed to have _not_ discovered yet.

(Well. There's no sane explanation on how he got back to life the very first time either, but here he is.)

“We don’t have time,” Bruce says, but he’s not moving. His gaze is heavy on Jason, sweeping from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. Jason ignores it and takes in Bruce’s clothes. They’re the exact one from his dream, fuck, no, _memory_ \- blue polo shirt and black jeans and Jason doesn’t know what to do with that realization.

“Time for what?” Jason asks instead. “Was it magic? Were we - “ _Did I die again?_

“I had to see,” Bruce says, and Jason pretends he doesn’t understand because it’s not something he wants to touch with a ten-foot-pole. Then Bruce reaches out to touch Jason’s shoulder and Jason takes a step back, heart suddenly pounding in his chest.

Bruce’s hand falls.

“I have a working theory,” Bruce says. Then stops. Of course he does.

“Care to share what?” Jason asks dryly. He still feels a bit out of loop somehow, something thrumming in his veins, and he’s pretty sure his mind hasn’t registered the dream, or whatever, in which he just died and came back to life again. It seems to be a working theme with him. “I don’t exactly want to see you in the afterlife. I thought one life would be enough.”

There’s a pinch in between of Bruce’s eyebrows but he doesn’t comment on the later statement. “We need to get to the Watchtower immediately.”

“Whoa, hey,” Jason starts to argue. “There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere with you. Thanks but no thanks. I’m leaving town right now.”

“Jason,” Bruce says, but he says it in the same way he used to say _Robin_ , and holy shit, that is not a shiver that Jason is trying to repress.

“No,” Jason protests vehemently. “I’m not going and you can’t make me.”

“Think about it for a second,” Bruce snaps, apparently abandoning any illusion of a peaceful negotiation. “We woke up five hours before the creatures had started appearing the first time around. They could be here again any second.”

“That’s the problem with you,” Jason starts, hands clenching into fists by his sides. “You think I never put my thoughts into anything. Well you’re fucking wrong. I’ve thought about it plenty, and nothing can make me go anywhere with you or step into the fucking death trap in space full of self-righteous beings.”

Fuck it. He is not getting involved in this mess. Whatever that was - hallucination, magic, or maybe even the fucking result of acid Damian had slipped into his birthday cake as retaliation for the birthday hats - Jason wants none of it.

“Hood,” Bruce says, and this time Jason doesn’t get to avoid Bruce’s iron grip on his arm. “There is something wrong and you know it.”

“Yeah, so what?” Jason retorts, tugging his arm from Bruce’s grip with no success. “Ain’t nothing new, there has always been something wrong in my life.”

Bruce tenses and Jason hates how he notices it just because he’s been paying attention. Even now, all Jason’s words to Bruce are calculated, blow by blow.

Then there’s also that burst of satisfaction, and - well.

“I understand you have a problem with me,” Bruce says stiffly. “But this is bigger than that.”

“Fuck you, conceited asshole,” Jason hisses. “Not everything is about you.”

“You know that going to the watch tower is the right thing,” Bruce says. Jason opens his mouth to argue even further but Bruce is not finished. “And,” Bruce continues. His mouth twists into a flat line. “You can always prove me wrong.”

Bruce is such a fucking manipulative asshole.

-

Jason hasn’t stepped a foot in the Watchtower ever since he died for the first time. The thought that he might have died _again_ seems ridiculous and he does not want to indulge the possibility _at all_. It must have been magic or some kind of fucked up hallucination; it’s also not the first time that he has more than vivid dream or imagination about his own death. Bruce keeps glancing at him whenever he thinks Jason doesn’t notice, though, and Jason busies himself by watching the passing cars outside and ignoring the asshole. Bruce is just blowing this fucking out of proportion.

There is nothing going on, besides some weird magic shit that they’re going to sort out immediately.

There can’t be.

The moment they teleport into the Watchtower they’re greeted by Superman’s frown.

“I gathered those I could get in touch with like you asked,” Superman tells Batman, but Jason doesn’t miss the way Clark’s eyes stay a second too long on Jason's helmet, tucked underneath his left arm. Jason wears it just to make a point. The helmet hisses and clicks as it fits on Jason's head. “And you're right, we can detect suspicious movements all around, and we've sent some people to check. Arthur found an energy source deep in the Pacific Ocean. But there’s something else that you have to see first.”

The thing that Batman needs to see, apparently, is a whole room full of superheroes crowded around the circular table in the middle. Nightwing, Kid Flash, Red Robin, and Robin are the only ones standing at the sideline and Jason makes his way to them. Wally West gives him a nod, and Jason nods back, pretending he doesn't notice Damian’s frown, Tim’s head tilt, and the way Dick visibly restraints himself from saying anything to Jason  by the tense line of his shoulders. _Suck it up_ , Jason wants to say. They're not getting anything out of him, and fuck all of this, Jason is just here to prove a point to Bruce.

Bruce slightly pauses when he sees what the others are gathering around. Green Arrow shifts on his seat and Jason can see -

“Lantern,” Batman says flatly.

“Son of a bitch,” the small green Hal Jordan hologram on the table says to Bruce. “Of course you had to be the one who killed a Beta.”

“A Beta?” Wonder Woman echoes to The Flash in the background. But - Jason knows instantly what Hal is talking about. No fucking way. This is not happening to him.

“It wasn’t me,” Bruce grunts. Of course Bruce has also put two and two together. “It was Red Hood.” The creature that Jason killed and had killed him earlier was a Beta. And because of that, now he's stuck in a mess of whatever this is.

So it’s not easily fixed magic, _shit shit shit_.

Tiny hologram Hal Jordan, shining out of a floating Green Lantern ring, swivels around. “Holy shit. Him? The second Robin? The one who _died_ before? Oh you're not going to like this even more.”

Jason narrows his eyes. What the hell is that supposed to mean and why is _he_ not going to like it _even more_?

“Hal,” Clark starts before Jason can open his mouth to snap at the Green Lantern. “Where are you? Where are the Lanterns and what are these creatures you're warning us about?”

“We don't know what they are,” Hal replies, moving his eyes off Jason to stare at Clark. There's a slight frown on his lips.

“How come you don't know? I thought you lanterns are supposed to be the space police,” Oliver Queen complains. The Flash snorts at that and Hal rolls his eyes.

“First of all, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not a space police, Ollie,” Hal says. “Second - we don't know. Suddenly we got reports of them suddenly appearing and wreaking havoc on multiple planets. Lucky for you guys, we have Intel on how to defeat them.”

“Then come back here and defeat them,” Bruce grunts.

“Unlucky for you guys,” Hal says, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s kind of tricky.”

“Surely it is not impossible,” Wonder Woman says.

Black Canary sighs. “Spit it out already, Hal.”

Hal clears his throat. “We lost contact with a lantern from one of the sectors and Kilowog decided to send some people to investigate - that was about two weeks ago, if I’m assuming you’ve only reset once.”

“Reset?” Flash asks.

But Jason -

Has to plant his feet firmly on the ground because -

“Yeah, I’ll get to that. So we got there only to find the planet stuck in a loop - there was this force field surrounding the planet’s area and keeping things out. We tried everything but we couldn’t get in, not until the force field flickers for a second and Kyle managed to blast through it. Apparently these creatures are called Mimics, and they have been conquering planets left and right.”

“Why haven’t we heard about this?” Bruce growls. “Something this dire should have come up on the radar before.”

“Well excuse us for being busy saving entire civilizations out there,” Hal snaps.

“This is hardly the time and place for an argument,” Clark interrupts, and he sends Bruce a warning glance. “Hal, why don’t you continue?”

The Green Lantern scowls and turns his gaze to Clark. “We found out that something in their Beta’s blood makes them have a unique ability of being able to reset time whenever they desire, after the green lantern of that sector managed to kill one, and that all the Mimics are connected to each other.”

“Okay… we're dealing with creatures that can mess with time,” Oliver groans. “That's always fun.” Black Canary jabs his side and he yelps.

“Yeah,” Hal says. “The thing with the Mimics is that they're not that tough on their own, but they can pretty much reset the time whenever they're pressed. That is… Um,” he visibly hesitates. “By killing the Beta.”

Jason tenses.

“Red Hood killed a Beta,” Bruce says slowly, his voice deadly calm but the line of his shoulders is tense and Jason wants to. He doesn't want to hear any of this, wants to go and leave, but he can't move. “What does it mean?”

“It means that every time the Red Hood dies time will reset and that every Mimic out there will try to kill him on first sight,” Hal says, and he sounds sorry, but Jason doesn't need that, he needs this to not happen.

“What?” He snarls, and for the first time everyone is looking at him, as if they're realizing his presence in the room. “What do you fucking mean by that?”

“When you killed the Beta, its ability got transferred to you,” Hal explains. “And it's a good thing because the ability to reset the time is what caused the Mimics to become undefeatable. They usually keep their Beta well hidden, but they must have underestimated Earth to flaunt it around like that.” Then he seems to realize what he's saying because he immediately tries to double back. “But uh. It sucks for you, because it means you died and need to… not die again and I'm sorry.”

“How do we ensure that the Mimics, as you called it, would be defeated?” Wonder Woman asks.

“See,” Hal says. “The Lantern who killed the Beta told us that she was having visions of a bigger creature that she thinks was the alpha, after some time of having the power. She was looped in with their communication, and that's how we got all this information. She managed to find the alpha and injure it enough to make it lost control of the force field for a split second - but that was enough for us and we helped her took down the alpha Mimic.”

“You're saying that I will be fucking connected to some bunch of weird creatures,” Jason says, and he can feel his own nails digging into his palm, but his voice sounds monotone to his ears. “That they will be in my head and hunting me down, just like that?”

“Uh.” Hal Jordan says. “Yeah.”

Jason’s hearing what they’re saying, but he doesn’t want to believe it. Or rather, he knows deep down that what Hal is saying is true.

He just -

Clark clears his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “So what's the best approach to this?”

“Alright, here's what you need to do,” Hal says.

A muscle on Bruce's jaw twitches and Jason can see the exact second when Bruce is going to say _You don't tell me what to do, Jordan,_ like he often did whenever they had to patrol with the Green Lantern, but he turns his head towards Jason and the words don't slip through his lips. They look at each other and Jason is the first one to look away.

“You need to make sure Red Hood lives long enough for you to hunt the alpha down. Because when time resets, no one would remember what happened but him.”

“I do,” Bruce interrupts sharply. “I remember.”

Hal’s eyebrows furrow. “That's weird. You shouldn't be able to.”

“He got splattered by the Mimics’ blood,” Jason says, barely aware of his lips moving. Bruce's eyes are heavy on him again but this time Jason refuses to meet his gaze. There’s something clawing up his chest, unease looming in the horizon, and Jason takes a deep breath because he feels as if the walls of the huge room are starting to cave in and the windows are cracking and this is not the time for that.

“Makes sense,” Hal offers to Bruce. “You were exposed to the blood, but you didn't kill it so you don't have the ability.”

Clark has a furrow between his brow. “So, if Red Hood dies - “

“The world will reset,” Flash finishes.

“And so, what? They’ll be targeting him?” Dick pipes up. Jason glances at him and it’s a mistake because Dick looks mad, Dick looks _furious_ , and it’s on behalf of Jason but it’s all wrong. Dick is not supposed to -

“To bring him back to the Alpha, most likely,” Hal tells them. “The Alpha is the only thing that can take away the power. You need to prevent them from ever having the reset ability back. That’s how they’ve conquered several other planets without anyone noticing. But the regular Mimics can't seem to transfer the time reset ability from another being that's not also a Mimic, so they will probably try to… uh, kill the Red Hood to reset the time if they're pressed.”

No one seems to know how to respond to the statement and a heavy silence follows it. Bruce is gritting his teeth so much, Jason thinks absentmindedly, and a part of him wonders when and where Bruce’s teeth would fall out because of the habit and if Jason could watch it happen.

“Listen, yeah? We managed to send this ring in the field just before the barrier goes up, but now us lanterns are stuck outside of it. We're trying all we can to destroy it, but the easiest way we can do it is if all of you can track down the alpha and force it lower the force field,” Hal says finally.

“That's it? We're stuck here? Nothing else we can do?” Oliver Queen asks, disgruntled.

“Keep Red Hood alive and kill the Alpha?” Hal suggests, turning to face something that the others can’t see. “Goodluck. I gotta go. Trouble’s here. Simon - ” and then the hologram disappears and the ring crumbles into pathetic dust on the table.

And Jason can't help it.

The tension that has been bubbling up in him finally loosens: he laughs.

-

There's a heated discussion that follows the Green Lantern’s disappearance, during which the League gets into an argument when everyone tries to suggest the best strategy to flush the Mimics out of hiding or attack the creatures before they can move towards the cities. Everyone is trying to suggest something and in between Green Arrow suggesting a massive explosion and Black Canary saying “no, Ollie, we can’t do that”, Jason has stopped listening. He turns his head to observe the vast darkness outside with the glittering stars in the distance, and Tim jabs Jason’s side with an elbow.

Jason’s glare is unfortunately hidden by his helmet.

“What the fuck, Red.”

Tim gestures at the door. “You should go. Find an empty room or something. I’ll make up an excuse.”

They both know that Jason has no access to the Watchtower’s system and he’s stuck there until someone lets him go. Knowing what they know now, the chance for that is none. They both also know that Tim is not going to help him escape either.

Jason doesn’t bother to ask and is glad when Tim doesn’t bother to offer or apologize for it.

“I’m fucking fine,” Jason snaps. “Second time dying wasn’t as bad as the first. Guess I’m used to it now.”

Tim looks unimpressed. “Come on, Hood.”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” Jason says finally, although the idea of getting away from the background noise is tempting him.

“Of course,” Tim says, and there’s a slight smirk on his lips.“When have I ever been rude?”

Because Tim could be an asshole when he wants to be, Jason settles on giving him a middle finger before striding towards the door. He doesn’t think anyone but Tim noticed him leaving. The door slides shut behind Jason and he starts walking. He doesn’t know where to go or where he wants to be, but he finds that his feet can’t stop moving and he can’t get away fast enough.

He ends up at the gym, which Bruce used to let him train in whenever he brought Jason to the Watchtower but was busy with work, and before he knows it he is making his way to the corner of the room and he is raising his fist and he is throwing a punch at one of the punching bags.

Jason’s breathing hard, the sound of his heart beat roaring in his ears, and the punching bag swings back and forth, taunting him.

He's aware that he's been repressing his emotions and denying all that's happening to him. He's emotionally stunted, but he's not _that_ emotionally stunted. He's also fully aware that his mind hasn't wrapped itself around the knowledge that Jason just died again, but that's not something he's going to deal with any time soon. The expressions on the others’ face when he laughed were priceless though, ranging from questioning Jason's sanity to downright horrified. This is the way Jason works - it always has been. He buries down things and lets them out one by one as a weapon against others.

If Jason can't leave, he sure as hell not going to play friendly with anyone.

Jason extends a hand out to still the punching bag and he bends down to put his hands on his knees.

When he looks up again, Damian is standing in front of him.

“What?” Jason grunts at Damian, when his tongue no longer feels like lead in his mouth. He has no energy to play one of the kid’s mind games. The brat has to spit out whatever it is that he wants to say. Probably one of his - _I’m superior than you, Todd_ \- speeches that Jason always finds fucking funny. But if the brat says that now, with all the frustration raging in Jason’s veins, there’s no guarantee Jason won’t actually tie him up and feed him to the crocodiles.

Killer Croc will be least of Damian’s problems then.

“You died again,” Damian says instead. Years of practice at burying his emotions - so Jason’s got issues, big fucking surprise - prevents Jason from doing anything but shrugging his shoulders. Damian is nonplussed. “Cassandra sent you a hug but I’m not going to hug you.”

Jason can’t help but snort at that. “And you what, want me to tell her that you did?”

“That would be beneficial, yes,” Damian agrees.

Jason plops on a wooden bench nearby and stretches out his legs. He just wants to be left alone. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Good,” Damian says, then he sits down crossed-legged on the mat in front of Jason.

“What the fuck are you doing? Go away.”

Jason imagines Damian cracking an eye open behind his mask. “I’m meditating. Everywhere else in here is too noisy.”

“Really? The giant Justice League Headquarters in outer space is too noisy? Without one other fucking empty room like, I don’t know, your father’s empty bedroom or a broom closet somewhere, perhaps?”

Damian’s eyebrow twitches. “Yes,” he says slowly.

Jason stares at the kid incredulously. “Fine,” he says finally, unclasping his helmet and putting it on the bench next to him. He’s too tired to call out that bullshit. He lies back down on the wooden bench and throws an arm over his eyes. “Suit yourself.”

-

He’s in the Wayne manor and the sun shines through the windows. There’s the smell of croissant in the air and the carpet is soft underneath his feet. He skips into the kitchen and Alfred smiles at him. Jason returns the smile and drags his usual chair back. There are three plates on the table. When he sits, Jason's legs don't reach the floor. Alfred places a pancake on Jason's plate and Jason can hear footsteps approaching. It must be Bruce. Contrary to what others believe, the Batman is not a morning person. Jason grins and prepares a snarky remark on the tip of his tongue.

But the man walking into the kitchen has red lips stretched wide, green hair, and a purple suit. Jason's blood runs cold.

The kitchen disappears, and now Jason's tied up on his chair. He's trying to move but his bones are shattered, and there's the sound of metal scraping against the floor as the Joker drags a crowbar towards Jason, flashing his yellow teeth.

And then there’s Bruce, not Batman but _Bruce_ , lying on the floor, bleeding from a hole in his chest, but Jason can’t do anything, because there’s laughter ringing in his ears and there’s _pain pain pain_ and there’s _green_ and -

Someone is shaking him awake.

Jason jolts and his hand snatches the knife he has strapped on his leg, slashing at the intruder. There's a loud clang as the knife clashes with Batman’s heavy gauntlet.

“Jay,” Bruce says, voice low. Damian stands behind him, his forehead creased. “You were dreaming.”

A dream. It was just a fucking dream.

Jason's hand is trembling as he lowers the knife. He wants to yell in frustration but all he can do is swallow the urge to tear his hair out.

“Don't call me that,” he rasps, and he watches as Bruce lowers his hand and crouches in front of the bench.

“Are you alright?” Bruce asks. His right hand flexes on where it rests on his knee. It's as if he wants to reach out but doesn't and Jason can't help but think that it's too fucking late for that.

“Oh fuck off,” Jason says, standing up. He pulls on his helmet because he can't stand the thought that they can _see_.  “Don't act like you care all the sudden. I get it. You need me to cooperate in order to save the world. For the greater good, yadda yadda. Not like you're giving me much choice, are you?”

“Tt,” Damian says, turning to walk away. “I'll go to check on the others, Father.”

“Thank you Robin,” Bruce says. Then he reaches up and pulls back his cowl.

Jason freezes. It's too fast, too soon, remnants of a dream where the same face staring at him was soaked with blood still flashing behind his eyelids. “Put it back on,” Jason says, and he’s glad that he has put on his helmet because the voice modifier hides the hitch in his breath. No, fuck, Jason doesn’t care. He _doesn’t_.

Bruce doesn’t move an inch. “You know that is not true. I care about you.”

The thin white scar on Jason’s throat throbs.

Jason swallows. “Does telling yourself that lie help you to sleep better at night? Because when it comes down to me and the fucking Joker, we know who you’re gonna pick.”

“Jason,” Bruce says, and oh, how good is Bruce at faking this? At pretending that it pains _him_? “I couldn't let you - “

“No,” Jason cuts in, shaking his head, taking a step back. “Fuck you. No. I don't want to hear about this and if you're sticking to your lie that you care about me - and we both know that it's goddamn bullshit - you're not going to continue that sentence.”

Bruce stiffens. For a second Jason thinks that Bruce is not going to listen to him, but the man stands up and pulls his cowl back on. “The others agree that for the meantime it would be safer for you to stay here.”

“The others agree,” Jason says, immediately grasping at the change of subject. With Bruce’s face out of sight, breathing becomes much easier. “But what do you think?”

“It doesn't matter what I think.”

“Ok,” Jason replies, irritated. He turns around to leave. “You’re right. It fucking doesn’t. If you need me, well. You’ll find me. It’s not like I can fucking go anywhere.”

“You saved my life,” Bruce says to his retreating back. It isn’t a thank you. It’s a question, one that Jason hears loud and clear.

Jason stops.

“Fuck I know why,” he says.

He continues walking.

-

Jason wasn’t lying. Not entirely. He didn’t have time to think when he saw the Mimic looming over Bruce. He only had time to react.

Here is what he lied about: when he reacted, it was to a single thought.

 _No_ , he had thought. _We’re not done yet._

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This chapter was... I'm not sure about it, to be honest, so feedback is appreciated! Now that I got (almost) all the heavy stuff out of the way, hopefully the third chapter can be up quicker. Featured next: the Batgirls!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop broke down and I finally got a replacement for it. Sorry for the long wait! All the kudos and comments mean so much to me and are why I continue writing this story. Hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. (At least, not much). Happy reading!

He’s standing next to the replacement in front of the numerous monitors of the Watchtower. Tim is hunched over a table, shouting instructions into his earpiece as the others are evacuating Gotham. The other heroes have split up, all of them focusing on the evacuation of their own hometowns.

Jason eyes the door on his right which Batman and Superman disappeared to a few minutes earlier, and the door on his left which leads to the unguarded zeta tubes. He’s not fooled though. Clark can catch him faster than Jason can say the word Gotham. Jason knows he should not have gotten rid of his kryptonite gas just because the container weighs more than his other weapons.

There’s the beginning of a headache persistently throbbing at the back of Jason’s head. He rubs the tip of his fingers on his right temple and exhales.

“No, Dick. The police handled the evacuation of that block already. I need you to go to the next street over and make sure that they’ve put the barricade up correctly,” Tim says. He types a few things into the computer and frowns.

Jason feels useless. His eyes are drawn to the monitors, to the dots of people rushing to the city border. He needs to do something, anything. He can’t just stand there and do nothing. Who’s to make sure that _his_ people gets help?

He reaches out - and presses his fingers to the keyboard next to the one that Tim’s using. He was not old enough, back then before he died, to be allowed to use the Watchtower’s complicated computer mainframe. But Bruce, ever the paranoid control freak, made sure that Jason learned about it. He remembers nights when he dozed off in this same room, Bruce’s back burned behind Jason’s eyelids as Batman hunched over the massive control panels on the slow nights when all Jason wanted to do was go home and read.

Jason’s fingers continue to move, flicking switches and typing in keywords and commands that he vaguely remembers in his mind. The light in front of him turns green, signaling that Jason’s memory hasn’t failed him yet. He sees Tim watching him from the corner of his eyes, but Red Robin doesn’t stop him.

Jason picks up the spare headphone and puts it on.

“Lark?” Jason says, breaking through the chatter. A tense silence answers him. Tim turns his head.

But then Duke’s voice comes through, loud and clear.

“Yeah, Hood?” Duke says. “What can I help you with?”

Jason ignores the tense undercurrent of Duke’s words. There’s a time and place for that, and besides, Jason doesn’t regret the things he said to the kid. Jason meant all of it.

“You’re one street over from 216 Burham street. It’s an apartment building.” He says instead. “Check unit 306 and see if Mrs. Moore is evacuated yet. She’s eighty, lives alone, and has a hard time hearing. After that I have a couple more addresses that I think you should check.”

Tim is not bothering to hide his stare.

There’s a slightly longer pause in the communicator.

“Well?” Jason says.

“Yeah,” Duke finally replies. “Send me the other coordinates. I’m on my way.”

“I’ll handle one address,” Steph pipes up.

“Me too,” Cass chimes in.

“It would be a lot easier to distribute them if you could type them into our list,” Tim points out. He scoots over to press some keys on the keyboard in front of Jason. “There,” he says, as another screen with a spreadsheet opens up. “Input the addresses there and they should be sent out to the others immediately.”

“Uh,” Jason nods. “Good to know.”

“Just doing my job,” Tim replies, and then he moves back to his own keyboard.

Jason clears his throat. He starts typing his addresses and double checks them before he sends them off. He watches the flickering screens and tells Dick to avoid a particular route, and warns Cass that Mr. Parker has a shotgun, so she should never ever try to sneak up on the man. Cass huffs.

“Hood? I just dropped Mrs. Moore at one of the evacuation points,” Duke says. “You were right, she didn’t know what was happening. I’m heading to the next of your list.”

“Thank you,” Jason says, and like what he said at that balcony, he also means it this time.

.

When things go awry this time, somehow it is not that surprising for him.

His first clue is the explosion.

It’s always the explosion.

Jason tenses, his hand gripping the gun on his side. Tim pauses from shouting instructions through his communicator, his back curved up. “What was that?”

Clark appears next to them and tilts his head, as if he’s listening to something far away. He looks at Jason and reaches out to grasp his elbow. Jason scowls and wrenches his elbow from Clark’s grip and takes a step back. Clark doesn’t sigh, but he looks like he wants to. “Hood, we need to go now.”

“Red Robin, initiate emergency protocol 21. There’s a breach in the South Wing and we need to contain it,” Batman stands in the middle of the doorway to the room, his square jaw illuminated by the glow of the tablet in his hand. He looks at Jason and Jason glares back at him. “Superman, you need to get him out of here.”

“ _He_ can hear you just fine,” Jason snarls. Something that he tells himself is not anxiety but feels very much like it is clawing up his chest. He’s better than this, he is. “No need to speak as if I’m not here.”

“Then you are aware that you need to leave with Superman,” Batman replies. Over at the computers, Tim is furiously typing and the alarm blares as the entire Watchtower _shakes_. “Superman can’t properly fight here, not without destroying the entire Watchtower and endangering us.”

“Brilliant idea,” Jason snaps, “keeping me in a fucking flying deathtrap in space.”

“We thought there would be less chance of them going after you if you’re not on Earth,” Clark explains, as always playing the peacemaker, and Jason can’t help but remember the times when the Kryptonian had done the same thing between Dick and Bruce as Jason watched, perched on a ledge in the Batcave. “Batman was outvoted, don’t blame him.”

“We have intruders coming in two minutes,” Tim shouts.

“Let’s go Hood,” Clark says again, shooting one last glance at Bruce and urging Jason to follow him to the zeta tubes. Jason does, just so that he wouldn’t have to look at Batman, who’s still looking at him and ignoring the beeping of the tablet in his hands.

Clark enters some codes and steps into the tube, and Jason is about to do the same thing, just when there’s a loud crack and Tim is thrown back, slammed against the tables near the windows on the other side of the room. Four Mimics stand in the middle of the hole in the wall where the massive computer should be, snarling, with their tentacles flailing wildly in the air.

“Red Robin!” Batman yells, but Tim is slumped on the floor, unmoving, his fingers splayed on the grey floor. Batman gets some explosives from his belt and throws them at the Mimics. The creatures screech and turn their attention toward him.

“Batman!” Clark zips forward, out of the zeta tube, and throws a hard punch at one of the creatures, slamming it backwards to the hole where it came from, straight into the other two Mimics and away from Batman. The creatures stand back up with surprising agility, considering their large sizes, and launch themselves back to Clark.

“No, Clark!” Bruce shouts, and there’s something that Jason tells himself is not panic but sounds very much like it in Bruce’s voice. “Get Jason and Tim!”

Jason is frozen with one foot stepping into the tube, and another rooted on the floor of the Watchtower. Logically, some part of Jason’s brain tells him that he should get into the tube and get out of there. It’s not that he’s selfish. It’s just that the mission - the cause - always comes first, something that has been instilled at him since the early age, be it keeping his mother alive or shutting down a smuggling ring, and right now, because of some sheer dumb coincidence, the mission is _him_ . He is not used to _this._ He's not used to being the purpose, cuddled and protected, instead of being expendable in the front line.

Well, the bigger part of him is simply awful at self preservation.

Jason steps out of the tube and pulls out his guns and starts to run towards Tim. There’s another loud crash as Clark tries to shake one of the Mimics off his back. The other two are getting ready to pounce on Clark and Clark twists his arm to avoid a jab. Jason presses his fingers to Tim’s neck. His pulse is faint, but there, and his arm is twisted into a weird angle. Jason gathers Tim’s unconscious form up and drags him back towards the tube. From the corner of his eyes, Jason sees Bruce trying to keep a Mimic away by tying its tentacles together.

“Jason!” Bruce snaps again. “Go now!”

Jason scrambles to the tube, dragging Tim’s dead weight, and punches in some random coordinates into the machine. He’s lucky that Clark activated it earlier, now he just needs to pick a destination. Fuck, he hopes the coordinates he entered is somewhere on Earth.

The zeta tube fires up.

 _70%_ , the screen tells him. The Mimics are relentless, even when Clark keeps pushing them back again and again.

 _80%_. Bruce makes his way to the tube, the tied up mimic behind him already starting to work its way out of the ropes tying it. Tim’s arm is draped on Jason’s shoulders. Jason’s eyes dart to the glass windows and feels a heaviness sinks to the bottom of his stomach.

“Bruce,” he says, softly.

He doesn’t know if Bruce heard him, or if he was simply reading Jason’s lips from beneath the cowl, but his head snaps towards the windows too and he sees what Jason sees.

Tiny dark dots are approaching them, getting bigger and clearer as they get closer.

Flying Mimics.

An army of them.

85%

The Mimics slam against the glass.

90%

Bruce’s hand is outstretched towards Jason. The glass windows crack and break.

 _98%_.

They get sucked into the vast dark vacuum of space.

.

This time, when Jason wakes up in his apartment and there’s no hole on his bedroom wall, Bruce is not there.

He doesn’t waste any time, doesn’t even wait for his pounding heart to settle, pushes his nausea back. He stands and packs a bag and grabs his motorcycle keys. He runs down the stairs and gets on his bike and races full speed outside the city. He’s almost at the city border when his earpiece beeps and Bruce’s gruff voice comes through his earpiece even without Jason’s permission.

Of course Bruce had to hack Jason’s earpiece.

“Come back now.”

“See,” Jason drawls. “I thought about that, and the answer is no, thank you.”

He veers off the highway to take the shortcut underneath the bridge. There’s no camera here, and no Gotham citizen, not even the idiotic villains, is that stupid to use the narrow path, not when it is submerged under water most of the time. He knows that the tide should be low enough at this point in the season and during the day. Mud splatters his jeans and the wind blows his hair away from his face. His eyes water -

He should have worn a helmet.

“You are not thinking clearly,” Bruce says, his voice eerily calm. Deceivingly calm.

Bruce is trying to not lose his shit.

Jason snorts and grips his motorcycle handles tighter. “Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

“Ja - “

“Goodbye Bruce.” Jason takes his earpiece out of his ear and chucks it to the ground below. He could go somewhere far, he could. He could hide himself. He is good enough for that, to survive even when he wished he would not.

A figure drops down from the bridge above, in a pair of shorts with a bright yellow shirt.

“Fuck!” Jason pulls the brake and skids to a stop just in time before he hits Cass.

She crosses her arms, unfazed, standing there with her legs spread wide. “I was in the area,” she tells him. “Ballet class.”

Why can’t they just fucking leave him alone?

Jason gets off his bike and throws his bag to the ground. “There’s no chance of me getting past you, is there?”

Cass tilts her head.

So that’s a no.

“Well,” Jason says, because the other option is going _back_ and keep -  “I’m gonna fucking try.”

.

Later on, Cass presses her muddied boot on his chest as he lays on the ground and he glares up at her. His jaw throbs from where he has landed wrong but she’s not even breathing hard, not even a single strand of her hair is out of place.

She extends a hand out to him.

Jason doesn’t take it.

“You don’t know what’s happening,” he says lowly. “You can't make me go back.”

“He’s worried about you,” Cass says, and then she sits cross legged on his chest. Jason lets the back of his head thud against the ground, uncaring that he’s laying on mud and dirt, Cass’ weight anchoring him. “What is… happening?”

“Aliens,” he replies. “They can turn back the time.”

“Mmm,” Cass says. “And?”

“I killed one of it and they lost the ability to turn back the time and now they’re trying to kill me so they can get it back.” Jason closes his eyes. “Also there’s the part where time resets when I die - and nothing gives a goddamn perspective more than dying the third time around.”

Cass places a palm on his cheek. Jason sighs and forces himself to lie still.

“How did you know I’d go this way?” He mumbles finally, cracking his eyes open again after a few moments of silence.

“You’re not as unpredictable as you think you are,” Cass says, concern in the crease of her eyebrows. She tugs on his left arm. “Get up. It’s dirty.”

“You’re still sitting on me,” Jason complains. He’s somehow used to it by now, how tactile Cass gets. She sometimes would get the drop on him, circle her arms around his waist, and before he could even manage to open his mouth to yell at her, she would beam at him and disappear to wherever she came from. It’s gotten to the point that now he could only sigh whenever she does it and wait until she’s done.

“Are you going to run again?” Cass asks.

The quiet thrumming of the batmobile approaches them.

“No,” Jason answers.

The word burns his tongue.

.

The ride back to the Batcave is tense, silent, and completely familiar. Batman had stepped out of the Batmobile, taken one look at the both of them, and ordered them to climb into the vehicle.

Jason had protested about leaving his bike but Bruce had glared at him, and said: “We’ll get you a new one.”

Fucking rich guy.

The second they step out of the Batmobile and into the cave, Steph bounds up to them and wrinkles her nose. “What’s this smell? It’s like somebody died again.”

Jason puts out his fist. She taps it with hers and grins.

Bruce doesn’t seem amused.

He strides to the monitor, black cape swishing against the dark stones. Cass follows, then she plops herself down on Bruce’s seat before he can sit down. Bruce sighs but doesn’t comment.

“I’m not saying that it’s special treatment,” Steph says, putting her hands on her hips. “But that is special treatment. He would have killed us if we did that.”

Bruce starts typing on the computer, still not saying anything, with his back tense. Cass is looking up at Bruce’s face. She lifts a hand and puts it on Bruce’s arm. The sound of Bruce’s typing falters from its steady typing for a second before it continues. Jason swallows.

He takes off his muddy jacket. Jason has half a mind to drop it right on the floor out of pettiness, but he doesn’t want to make Alfred clean it. He throws it back into the Batmobile instead, because he knows Alfred makes Bruce clean the car himself. The passenger seat was already dirty because he sat on it earlier, but Bruce’s seat was not. Yet.

“Hey,” Steph whispers. She takes off her cowl. Jason has found that whenever someone does that, it doesn’t mean good things for him. “You ok? I heard that something happened but B was fuzzy on the details.”

Jason snorts. “Something happened alright,” he mutters.

“Huh,” Steph says. “On a scale of Constantine messing up and causing a worldwide magic mishap to Dick eating Alfred’s cupcake when he was explicitly told not to, which one is it?”

“Oh yeah, Dick eating Alfred’s cupcake for sure.”

Steph winces. “That bad?”

“Yeah.”

She studies him. “You alright, though?”

_I don’t kn -_

_Not really._

“Fuck off, Blondie.”

“That’s the Jason Todd we know and sometimes love, sometimes hate, and sometimes love to hate,” Steph says wryly, but she is still studying him. “You should go shower. You reek like someone took a dump in a sewer and then you rolled around in it.”

“Geez,” he says sarcastically, and makes his way to the locker room, just so he doesn’t have to stand there with Steph’s eyes on his face. “Way to feel the love.”

He doesn’t expect Bruce to follow him there, but honestly, he should have not put anything off the guy who dresses up as a Bat. Bruce stands near the bench while Jason opens a locker and starts emptying his pockets.

“What you did was irresponsible,” Jason says, because he might as well be the one who fucking rips off the bandage, right? “Stupid, and reckless, blablabla. Did I miss one of your talking points?”

He glances back to find Bruce with his cowl off, frowning at him.

Jason fucking _hates_ it when they do that.

“You really think I’d say that?” Bruce asks mildly. “After I watched you die for the third time?”

Jason grips the locker door, the metal edge digging into his palm. “I used to think you wouldn’t,” he says.

Bruce takes a step closer.

Jason can’t stop the hysterical laugh from bubbling out from his throat. “But Bruce, you’re the one who slit your undead son’s throat, so what do I know?”

“Jay,” Bruce says softly. “I’m - “

“Don’t you fucking say you’re sorry,” Jason says harshly. “You made a choice. Fucking live with it.” He slams the locker door closed and presses his forehead against its cool surface.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says anyway.

Jason closes his eyes and represses a shudder. “What a fucking asshole.”

“I know… that you don’t want to hear it, but I will keep repeating it to you. I can’t keep losing you, not anymore and not again.”

Jason knows that the version of himself from a few years ago, who had sat in a dingy hotel room, bandaging his own throat, desperate, and terribly, terribly alone - he would have accepted the apology in several heartbeats. He would have given everything to have Bruce admit that he was wrong, that Bruce made a mistake, that he -

But now, Jason is just tired. He’s tired because he realizes that they’re so far from being okay, that it’s laughable there was even a version of him that thought they could be.

Laughable there was a version of him that wanted them to be okay in the first place.

Liar, liar, liar. Jason is an excellent liar.

“Get the fuck out,” he says. “I want to take a shower.”

Bruce hesitates, obviously because he hasn’t said everything that he wants to say but knows Jason wouldn’t listen to anything else. He did the same, back then, when he was still wearing green shorts. “We will discuss what to do after this. I have arranged another League briefing, assuming that they no longer remember what we have discussed before because of the time reset. Please refrain from running away again.”

Jason isn’t sure he knows how to stay.

.

The League’s reaction is pretty much the same with how they reacted the first time around: confusion, disbelief, shock, and outrage. The briefing is done remotely this time, with Bruce repeating Hal’s message and all the information that they know through the webcam. The rest of the Bats joined to watch in the cave after they arrived a few minutes ago, but Jason hasn’t glanced at them even once.

“If the two of you are the only ones who can recall what has happened, is it possible for you to remember their attack patterns?” Aquaman asks.

“No,” Jason says, regretting speaking up right away when everyone’s eyes are on him. “They won’t repeat the same pattern. They know we have the time reset ability, so they will ensure that they use new strategy each time.”

Wonder Woman lets out a low hum. “And how do you know this?”

Jason finds out that he just… _does_. The knowledge feels like an old memory, a similar feeling to knowing the taste of coffee and the smell of freshly cut grass. “I don’t know. I just do.”

“Is it the visions or the mental link that Green Lantern told us about?” Superman asks, baffled. “Is it starting?”

Jason grits his teeth. “I told you that I don’t know. I’ll fucking tell you if I do.”

Superman frowns.

“We’ll start evacuations then? Even if we’re flying blind?” Black Canary interrupts.

Batman nods. “That is the best course of actions. I’ll run some tests, but we might need to get someone to cover Metropolis. Superman, if you don’t mind - “

“Yes, I’ll be in the cave soon,” Superman tells them. “Don’t worry, Superboy and the others are in Metropolis right now. Is there something else - ”

But Jason is no longer there.

He is somewhere else, somewhere underground.

An underground parking lot.

He is marching amongst an army of Mimics.

He panics for a second, trying to scramble for a weapon, but then he realizes that they are not looking at him, not even the Mimic behind him. His heart beats wildly in his chest as he tries to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Is this a vision? There is no other reasonable explanation other than that - if he just got transported, the other Mimics would be attacking him right now - so he tries to calm himself down and begins to catalogue his surroundings.

The underground parking lot seems endless. The parking lot has rows and rows of orange pillars and modern cars that have been pushed aside and trampled on. They march and march and march and march but they barely make any progress. There is a red light shining from the other end, but other than that, he can’t make out much of anything else.

After what seems like hours, they stop marching. The red light grows brighter and brighter, until it starts to _move_ , except that it’s Jason that has been moving, something nudging and pushing at him until he stands at the edge of a very deep hole where the light comes from.

There is an eye there. A glowing, massive, red eye in the darkness below.

Jason feels a chill in him.

The red eye is looking straight at _Jason_.

.

He wakes up with a jolt on the infirmary bed with Oracle sitting next to him. She has a laptop balanced on top of her lap and she immediately rolls her wheelchair forward to try to steady him. “Slowly,” Babs orders, grasping at his elbow. “You’ve been out for hours.”

“Pen,” Jason gasps, clutching at his head, because his head throbs but he needs to write everything down while he can still remember.

He needs to write everything down because they are in so much shit.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The characterization that I was going for in this was based on how Jason hasn’t really processed his death the first time around, and yet here he is, stuck in this scenario. Hope I didn’t butcher everyone’s characters. Thank you for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting! I promise that I’d get back to them soon! Next chapter: old team mates with red hair!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... honestly don't know how I feel about this chapter. I kept going back and rewriting parts of it because I don't feel like I'm doing it justice. Regardless, this is my best attempt at it and I still hope you enjoy it!

“What do you mean the giant eye talked to you?” Damian demands, voice rising with disbelief. At his side, Dick nudges him in warning and Damian scowls.

To Jason’s pounding headache, the shrill tone doesn’t help at all. “I meant what I said earlier, brat,” he replies through gritted teeth. “Let me paraphrase - the giant eye told me that they’re going to fuck Earth over and burn everything to the ground.”

It was unlike anything else he had felt. The eye - the alpha, was _inside_ his mind. It didn’t speak to him, not with words, but Jason understood what it was saying anyway. The Alpha had only shown him fragments of feelings and images and yet the threat had come across as crystal clear.

It was telling him that there was nowhere to hide.

Babs flips through Jason’s scribbles. He had written down everything that he could remember: car plate numbers, sketches of the interior designs, and some rough drawn details of the mimics. “B, take a look at the sketches that Hood did. I’ve run the partial plates and we just need to wait for the results, but maybe we could do some more in depth analysis into the Mimics’ anatomy.”

Bruce looks over Barbara’s shoulder. Tim, who has his limbs intact and not unconscious on the floor, follows suit. If Tim noticed Bruce’s continuous glances at him, he hasn’t mentioned it yet. Cass seems content to be perched on Bruce’s seat as usual. “Superman already told us that his Fortress doesn’t have data of the Mimics, other than that they exist somewhere far from here.”

“Obviously not far enough,” Steph says, scoffing. Jason wholeheartedly agrees. “It’s also kinda suspicious how they haven’t started any attacks yet right now. What are they waiting for?”

“It’s a bit difficult to ask the GCPD for evacuation when they see no proof of alien invasion,” Duke adds. “They’ve put me on hold for three times already.”

“I know that we ruled out magic,” Dick chimes in, “but maybe we shouldn’t write it off that quickly yet. There must be an explanation on how the Mimics can keep bending time. Since scientific reasonings are probably useless - maybe someone familiar with magic has an explanation for this.”

“Mother and Grandfather may also have something that we could use,” Damian admits, frowning. Jason catches Dick shooting Damian a look. “Probably not about the creatures, but a theory regarding how they could reset time, and how they have transferred the ability to Todd.”

“Do we have an approximate prediction on how long they would strike again after each reset?” Duke asks.

Jason scoffs. “No one would pay attention - “

“They tracked Red Hood down in twelve hours,” Bruce answers, unfazed, eyes still trained on the papers. Jason scowls. “I would expect they’d get quicker this time. Transporting him would be too risky since there is no guarantee the next place we take him to would be safer than the Watchtower.”

“Why not let him stay here?” Steph pipes up. “There’s no use to pretend that you haven’t spent more money to make the Cave safer and more hidden than the Watchtower, which is in space and like, hidden from nothing.”

“She’s right,” Dick adds. “With Superman on his way here, this might be the safest place until we can figure out a further strategy.”

“No,” Jason says. “I’m not staying here.”

Silence.

Cass sighs.

“No need to be stubborn,” Tim starts, but Jason cuts him off before he can continue.

“I’m going with you,” he says, and fuck, he’s not sure about a lot of things, but this one he knows. He doesn’t realize when the resolution has formed in his mind, probably some time between waking up with shaking fingers and bile in his mouth and being talked about like he’s not standing in the room, but it has become a pressing need at the centre of his thoughts.  “I’ll be going with you to the Alpha’s place once we figure out the location.”

Bruce turns and glares at him. “No.”

“Father, it would be a lot easier if we just sedate Todd and chain him somewhere,” Damian suggests. Jason gives him a middle finger.

Jason doesn’t know how to make them understand when he himself doesn’t rationally get it. Logically he knows that it doesn’t make any sense for him to go there, but there’s something else in him, a knowledge, that he would be the only one that could kill the Alpha.

The Alpha wouldn't die unless Jason kills it.

It feels like something that he has always known, much like how he understood what the Alpha was saying in his vision without thinking about it, and he thinks: well, shit.

“I have to be the one killing the Alpha.” The words taste sour on his tongue, but he says it with a firmness, a surety that went missing the second he had put a bullet through the Beta’s eye. He straightens his back and feels the disapproval heavy in the air. “It has to be me, otherwise it wouldn’t die.”

Bruce is not saying anything.

“And you know this, how?” Babs takes off her glasses and starts to wipe it with a piece of cloth. She’s watching him though, calculating, and Jason stares at her right back.

She’s asking him to convince her.

Yeah, he can try.

“The Mimics, they don’t fare well under water, because there’s no water where they came from. It’s not going to hurt them, but they’ll be hesitant enough that we can use a shit ton of water to slow them down.” Jason swallows. The words flow out of his mouth, and even as he’s saying them he knows they’re true. He wasn’t even aware that he knows them. “They’ve also burned down many worlds before they came here. They’re looking for - something. Something they think is here.”

Barbara nods and puts her glasses back on. “Seems like the communication link that Green Lantern told us about has started to work. Do you know if you can draw more information from it?”

“No,” he answers, shrugging. “I don’t get to choose what I know, and I don’t even fucking understand how - but it’s suddenly there in my mind.”

“Okay,” Barbara says, and Jason knows he has earned her vote. “We should note down everything that you’re aware of now and share it with the others.”

“Water,” Duke repeats. “That’s good right, for us to know a weak point of theirs?”

“Yeah,” Tim says. “We can evacuate the citizens to waterfronts and compose plans where we can utilize a _shit ton_ of water.”

“Fuck you.”

“Slowing them down is better than nothing,” Steph agrees.

“Alright.” Bruce says, and Jason blinks. If he expected Bruce to say anything, it’s certainly isn’t that. That’s… a bit too easy, cutting down through all the brooding and glares and disagreement about how all the ideas but Bruce’s are stupid as shit. “Nightwing will contact Zatanna and then accompany Robin to visit Talia. The rest of you will focus on evacuating the city.” He turns to Jason. “And you will stay right here.”

Of, fucking, course.

“Didn’t you listen to what I said?” Jason demands, voice rising. “It has to be me, otherwise the Alpha wouldn’t die and this whole fucking thing will be pointless!”

“I did,” Bruce replies, and Jason wants to throw a shoe at that fucking stupid impassive face. “You showed no control over what information you receive. There is no guarantee that it wasn’t bait to get you walking into their trap.”

You showed no control.

_No control._

Jason clenches his fists. “It’s not a trap. It’s the truth.”

“We’ll find another way,” Bruce says.

And it feels -

like being benched from a mission because Bruce didn’t think Jason could handle it. Like having Dick spending time with him and pretending he didn’t know that it was because Bruce was out of town and wanted someone to watch over him.

Like being back from the dead and learning that he had been replaced.

“Why can’t you trust me just this once?” Jason asks. His palms hurt from where his nails dig into the skin. His eyes sting. He doesn’t wait to hear Bruce’s dry reply or see the disapproval radiating from his face and makes his way to the long winding stairs.

No one stops him.

.

Jason hasn’t been back to the Manor even once since his resurrection. He’s been to the cave a couple of times, but stepping into the hallway and smelling the familiar scent of old carpets and wooden furnitures are two things that he didn’t think he would do again.

He stalks through the corridors and ends up in front of his old room.

He hesitates, debates against it, knows that they probably turned it into an old storage room already, but he pushes the heavy doors open anyway.

His room is exactly the way he left it.

Well, he thinks, this is just fucking idiotic.

They’re keeping a shrine for a dead boy - shrines, if you count the insulting Robin suit downstairs - and somehow it never occurred to any of them that the dead boy will never come home. Jason approaches the high shelves and runs a finger on the spines of the books he had once treasured above anything else. He stops at _Sense and Sensibility_ and reaches behind the book, where the tips of his fingers brush against plastic. _Huh_.

The small plastic of cigarette he stored from - back then. It’s still there.

Jason takes the small ziploc bag and inspects the couple of cigarette sticks in it. The bag kept them from drying out, though they smell a bit stale, but well, it’s decent enough. He picks one out and slips it between his teeth, pocketing the other one as he reaches for his lighter.

“I thought I have gotten rid of those a long time ago.”

Jason stiffens but doesn’t stop himself from lighting up his cigarette. “Apparently not.”

Alfred steps into the room, carrying a tray with a couple of plates on it. The butler frowns disapprovingly; he never likes it when Jason smokes. “Indeed, Master Jason. You have always been too smart for your own good. Open the bloody window, at the very least.”

Jason obliges, walking to the window to push one open. He leans forward slightly to blow the smoke outside and he watches as the smoke rises and rises in the heat of the summer.

Alfred places the tray he was carrying on the small table near the window and sits at one of the two arm chairs, where Jason used to sit with Bruce on lazy afternoons to play chess or read together. Jason eyes Alfred suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. “What is this,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“Sit down,” Alfred instructs, clasping his hands together on his lap. “I have taken the liberty to cook you some soup, since god knows when you last ate something.” He raises an eyebrow. “I hope you are not going to leave the food uneaten.”

Jason’s stomach chooses that moment to growl, and he notices for the first time how hungry the whole ordeal has made him, yet the thought of food is unappealing to him. Jason stubs his cigarette on the window sill. “I’m not in the mood to eat.”

“Don’t be foolish.” Alfred lifts the metal cover on the tray to reveal a bowl of tomato soup. “I made your favorite.”

Jason sits down. Alfred hands him a spoon.

The tomato soup smell fills Jason’s nostrils. He dunks the spoon into the soup. Jason says, “I’m alright.”

Alfred says nothing.

“I truly am,” Jason repeats. He doesn’t know what he wants to do here. He just thinks that he should be doing something, saying something, anything. “So there’s no need for you to worry.”

Alfred looks at him. “My boy,” he says. “I’ll always worry.”

Jason’s mouth feels dry. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth. “I—”

It was the end of his first year at the manor. It was the beginning of his last year at the manor. It’s now, several years in the future, when Alfred looks at him with the same set of eyes and reaches out with familiar hands.

He’s standing before he knows it. He’s walking towards Alfred before he knows it. He’s kneeling in front of Alfred, heart in his throat.

Jason presses his face into Alfred’s arm and the grandfather pats his back.

He breathes.

-

There’s a stain on the ceiling of his old bedroom that Jason had forbidden Bruce from painting over. In a house full of perfect things, his young self found solace in the imperfect.  The stain is shaped like nothing, really, but Jason often would lay on his back on the bed just so he could guess what it looks like.

Today, the stain looks like Australia.

He knows the others left because the door to his bedroom had cracked open, just the tiniest bit. He pretended he was sleeping. Bruce pretended he didn’t know Jason wasn’t sleeping. It’s an old routine perfected through years of wishing and yearning and navigating where they stood with each other.

And all Jason could think about is: _bullshit_.

He knows what’s right, here. He knows what to do.

Fuck all of them for not trusting that he could do the right thing.

Jason goes down to the cave.

.

Clark says, “I can hear you breathing.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide,” Jason replies, and steps out of the shadows.

Clark turns his gaze away from the giant computer screen to look at Jason. Red dots are moving on screen, all over a map of the Earth. Jason nods at the map. “Shouldn’t you be out there, saving the world? There’s got to be more important lives to save than mine,” he drily says.

Clark says, “There’s no one life less important than the others. And I think I said this before, but everyone always seems to forget that I don’t work alone.”

Jason scowls and takes a couple of steps forward. “That’s where you and I disagree. Of course there are more important things that you should be doing, and more important lives that you should be saving. _I_ can protect myself. Most people can’t. You’re useless here.”

Jason used to call him Uncle Clark, used to visit Smallville for a weekend or two during the long endless summers, but Jason hasn’t spent too much time around Clark since he came back. Although he thinks he still knows how Clark works. Too much trust and faith in humanity.

Clark huffs out a laugh. “I’m pretty sure your father would have made all of the league stay here if he could. So even if you think you don’t need protection, I’m still doing the world a favor.”

“He wouldn’t,” Jason scoffs. He clenches his hands into fists and press them to his thighs. “That would be compromising the mission and nothing matters more to him than that.”

Clark watches him. Jason’s getting tired of everyone looking at him like they suddenly understand a deeper part of him that Jason himself doesn’t know existed. “The both of you have a lot to talk about.”

Jason makes his way to the screen but ensures he still stands far enough from Clark. “Goodluck making us try.”

Clark tilts his head, seemingly listening to something on the coms. He presses a couple of buttons, and several red dots near Singapore switch off. Jason puts his hand inside the pocket of his jeans casually and runs his thumb on the smooth surface of the small box in it.

“You know,” Clark starts. He turns back to observe the screen. “I don’t have the best track record either, when you think about it. I treated Conner terribly when I first found out about him. I didn’t know what to do with a son back then. Bruce drove some sense into me, I guess. Do you know what he said to me?”

One time, during the first year after Jason officially got adopted by Bruce, Jason managed to persuade Bruce to bring him to the Watchtower for his monitor duty. It had been a long couple of weeks where he barely saw Bruce because the man had missions abroad. Jason was - admittedly, a bit sentimental back then and wanted to spend a bit more time with Bruce, though he would have never said it out loud, even if someone offered to pay him with some blackmail material on Dick. Bruce, being Bruce, had no idea that was why Jason insisted to come and kept leaving Jason alone to stare at computer screens. Jason sulked, and it was Clark who had taken one look at the both of them, winked at Jason, and offered to take over Bruce’s monitoring session.

Bruce took Jason out for ice cream on their way home.

“No,” Jason replies. He puts his thumb between the opening of the lead box in his pocket. “What did he say?”

“He said that I wouldn’t want to regret not treating Conner right when I no longer have the chance to. This was back when we didn’t know you were alive. I think it was - and still is - hard for him to not blame himself for your death.”

Jason snorts. He doesn’t know how many times that ridiculous argument will just keep popping up. “That’s just his huge ego. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t get to me on time. It _was_ his fault that he couldn’t do what needed to be done and put the Joker seven feet under ground.”

“No,” Clark says solemnly. “He blames himself for that, yes, but he also blames himself for the weeks before your death, Jason. The fights that you had, that drove you to run away in the first place. That’s what he blames himself for.”

And Jason -

He doesn’t expect that.

The clarity of his death in his mind - the sharpness of it, has overshadowed the weeks before the one determining event. He remembers the itch of several arguments that he had with Bruce, and thinking that he couldn’t tell Bruce about his search for his birth mother because they weren’t in a good place. But he has never thought of his relationship with Bruce in those several weeks as the cause of his death, or something out of the ordinary.

Everyone has fights with their parents in their teenage years, don’t they?

Jason’s breath hitches. Clark shoots him a sympathetic look. “He’s not the greatest at this, and neither are you. But this game of miscommunication needs to stop.”

Jason takes a deep steadying breath and wills for himself to calm down.

Focus.

“You’re right,” he says finally.

Clark quirks an eyebrow. “I am?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. He gives Clark a sardonic smile. “I’m not great at this. I’m sorry, Clark.”

“What are you - “

Jason cracks the lead box open inside his pocket.

Clark gasps and takes a staggering step back.

Jason takes the Kryptonite out.

The green stone illuminates Clark’s pale face.

“What are you going to do now?” Jason asks. “I know that you can still move and stop me, if you want. But how much control do you have over your power in this state?”

“Jason,” Clark chokes out. He grips the edges of the computer station and dents the metal with a loud creak. “Stop.”

Being around Batman means being around Superman. Being around Batman means learning the same things that Batman learns. Learning the same things Batman learns means learning Superman’s weaknesses.

And Jason’s not above using that knowledge.

Jason thinks, _Uncle Clark_.

Jason spreads his arms. “I’m not wearing any armor, or any protection at all. Will you risk injuring me? You can kill me, that’s always an option. Everything will just restart all over again and next time I’ll be gone before anyone can find me.”

He tosses the stone up in the air and catches it midway, observing the way it gleams through the gaps between his fingers. “But the question is - will you attack me when I won’t defend myself against you?”

Clark sinks to his knees. “Don’t - I won’t - “

“I know you won’t, Superman.” Jason says quietly. “I was counting on it.”

Clark’s eyes slid shut and he collapses on the floor. His body trembles and his teeth chatter.

Jason thinks, _Sorry_.

But there’s no time for that now. His entire life, he has learned how to survive. This is just yet another moment that he has to surpass.

Jason takes the lead box out of his pocket and pauses when he spots a figure standing on the stairs, illuminated by the yellow glow of the manor light.

“Master Jason,” Alfred chides.

Something in Jason withers, but he smiles wryly and pops the Kryptonite back into its box. Bruce thought he didn’t know about the decommissioned bunker entrance from the library, but Jason spent most of his time in the manor there. He had his suspicions. “You must be disappointed in me, huh Alfie?”

Clark’s body stops twisting on the floor but he’s out cold. Trust Bruce to know the best way to stab his friends on the fucking back without permanent damage. It’s an odd thing to be considerate about, so of course it is something Bruce masters. Alfred walks down the stairs and Jason tosses the box to the butler. Alfred catches it smoothly with one hand and kneels at Clark’s side to press a couple of fingers to Clark’s neck. “May I ask if you were planning to waltz out of the front door without considering the consequences of your actions?”

Alfred’s voice is steady.

Alfred is upset and trying hard not to show it.

There are a lot of things that Jason could say, if he’s being terribly honest. He could break down his plans logically to Alfred, so that the man would understand his reasonings. He could beg for forgiveness and hope that Alfred would at least listen to him, to why Jason did this, to why this is the only way they could save the world, to why it’s so fucking hard for him to spend another second playing pretend family but knowing he’s never going to be in the inner circle, not really and not ever. Instead, he says, “This is the only way. I wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.”

Alfred stands up and stares hard at Jason. “This is not the way to ask for such blind faith, Master Jason.”

Jason says, “That’s why I’m not asking for your trust.”

“Why do you not understand that we are merely taking measures for your own safety?” Alfred asks. “Do you think so little of us that you refuse to see how we care about you?”

“I - “ Jason turns his head away. In the distance, he can hear the fluttering wings of the bats. He exhales. “It’s not about that. It’s about doing the right thing.”

And for the first time since he came back, it is the truth.

“I am not foolish enough to think that I can stop you,” Alfred says. “You are a child no longer and you have always been strong minded. But you are foolish if you think I won’t alert the others the second you take your next step.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything otherwise.”

Jason takes one last look at Alfred - the frown on his lips and the worry lines on his forehead - and lets himself wish for a brief second that things are different between the two of them.

Then he shuts the thought out, because it’s mere wishful thinking and wishes have never come true for him.

Superman’s red cape is splayed on the cave’s floor.

Jason takes a step towards the parked batmobile.

Alfred presses the panic button.

-

The engine of the batmobile thrums underneath him. His hands are the steadiest that they have ever been. Jason only has a couple of minutes to ditch the car and make his escape. He’s good enough at blocking the batmobile’s signal to buy some time, but he knows he can’t stop Oracle’s hacking attempts forever.

Jason speeds up towards the nearest clearing, a big meadow not too far from the manor where he used to go exploring when he was younger, and ditches the car near the road. He walks through the knee-length weeds and wild flowers.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

A jet lands on the clearing, smooth and silent as a shadow but crushing the grasses beneath it, and Jason strides towards the plane door. It pops open and a hand reaches out to him. Jason takes the offered hand and Roy hauls him up into the plane.

“Jaybird,” Roy says, offering him a fist to bump. Kori smiles at Jason from the pilot seat. “You called?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that’s not how Clark is supposed to react to a Kryptonite - but for the sake of the story… let’s pretend it is? I’m sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> This was stuck in my laptop for months. I don't know how I feel about it, though. Let me know what you think? Thanks for reading! Find me on [tumblr](http://donnastroys.tumblr.com/) :)  
> 


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